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O Brother, Where Art Thou?

By David Kelly May 26, 2009 1:07 pmMay 26, 2009 1:07 pm

At the end of his essay “A Brother’s Story,” Tobias Wolff writes, “The good luck of having a brother is partly the luck of having stories to tell.” Andrew Blauner includes “A Brother’s Story” in his new anthology, “Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry,” along with pieces by the other Wolff son (Geoffrey), Richard Ford, John Edgar Wideman, Pete Hamill, Phillip Lopate, David Sedaris, Dominick Dunne, Jim Shepard, David Kaczynski (brother of the Unabomber), the Cheever boys (Benjamin and Fred) and the Rich kids (Nathaniel and Simon), among others.

In “My Brother’s a Keeper,” Chris Bohjalian captures the plight of the younger sibling:

Let’s face it: Older siblings invented the mind game. My older brother did not tell me that Thomas Edison invented the vegetable, as one older sister I know convinced her younger sister. But there was no shortage of misinformation he was happy to share. To wit: When I was in the seventh grade, I came across the word “cunnilingus” in an issue of National Lampoon. … I had no idea what the term meant and the context wasn’t especially helpful. And so I asked my older and wiser brother.

“It’s a Latin word for talking with your mouth full of food,” he explained with great earnestness. “The Romans were known for their table manners. Use it at dinner tonight with Mom and Dad. They’ll be impressed.”

I did and they were. But mostly they were impressed with how clever and funny my brother was.

The book features a very fine essay called “Headlock,” by Daniel Menaker. (He is married to Katherine Bouton, an editor at The Times.) In the second paragraph, Menaker writes:

My brother, Michael Grace Menaker, died more than 40 years ago, on Dec. 10, 1967. He was 29, I was 26. There were just the two of us. He died from a systemic staphylococcus blood infection – septicemia – in a Brooklyn hospital after routine surgery to repair a torn knee ligament. I remember that the hospital had low, mean ceilings, and that the neighborhood around it was flat, looking flattened. A doctor friend of our family’s performed the surgery. Imagine how he must have felt for the rest of his life.

Later, Menaker tells us about a touch football game played on Thanksgiving in 1967:

Mike’s wife and my girlfriend were standing on the sidelines. Before the game started, I tried to tease him about something, and when he didn’t respond, I got him around the waist and tried to wrestle him to the ground. He shook me off crossly and said, “Why don’t you grow up?” I was embarrassed and angry. …

Because he had bad knees and had already had surgery on one of them, Mike played the more static lineman position and I played backfield. Still consciously smarting from his scolding, I finally said, “I’m tired! You play backfield for once.” Mike said, “You know I can’t — I don’t want to hurt my knee.” I said, “Your precious knees will be fine.” He said O.K. On the very first play, he jumped to try to knock down a pass and came down with one of his legs all twisted up. It buckled beneath him and he tore a knee ligament badly. He was not only furious at me but immediately depressed, almost as if he knew that this would have a dire consequence, and his wife glared at me. I was covered with remorse and shame, and I apologized to them. Mike hobbled through the rest of the holiday, had his surgery in the first week of December, and died.

Finally, after describing “not only what I lost in this catastrophe but what I found” — an ability to console others, a deeper appreciation for art and literature, a compulsion to write — Menaker concludes:

Would I give back every sentence, every lesson learned, every bit of wisdom, every gram of sympathy for others, every sensitivity … to be instead whoever the person would have been who would now be watching Mike just after he turned 70, still trailing three years behind him? Instead of adding year after year to my unnatural seniority over him? Instead of coming around the bend of the year and into the fall with the usual vestigial schoolboy’s summer’s-end sadness so uniquely sharpened? Instead of living in the shadow of an alternative unlived life? You tell me.